Google marks the 50th anniversary of historical moon landing with an animated video Doodle.
This story belongs to To the Moon, a series checking out humankind’s very first journey to the lunar surface area and our future living and dealing with the moon.
Your Google search will take you on a journey few people have actually made — to the moon.
To mark the 50th anniversary today of NASA’s Apollo 11 objective — the very first time people set foot on the lunar surface area — Google is introducing an animated video Doodle on Thursday that will let you experience the journey to the moon and back. But you will not be going alone: Michael Collins, Apollo 11‘s command module pilot, will be your co-pilot and storyteller on the journey.
For practically as long as Google has actually been around, it’s perked up its barebones search page with art work that accentuates noteworthy individuals, occasions, vacations and anniversaries. Google Doodles have actually commemorated, amongst lots of other things, Pac-Man’s anniversary, Copernicus’ birthday, Mother’s Day and the World Cup. They’ve likewise advised us of lesser-known real-world heroes.
Few occasions in human history are as notable as the accomplishment of Apollo 11.
It was 50 years ago this week that Collins circled the moon in the Apollo 11 command module while Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin made the first crewed landing on the moon. Their monumental achievement was the result of almost a decade of work by hundreds of thousands of people trying to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s.
Apollo 11 arrived at the moon on July 19, 1969, after a 240,000-mile journey.
During the four-and-a-half-minute video Doodle, which is gradually rolling out around the world, Collins walks you through key moments of the mission, starting with the Apollo 11 launch.
The trio’s journey began on July 16, 1969, as their Saturn V rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Three days later, after traveling more than 240,000 miles, Collins parked the command module in a lunar orbit 60 miles above the moon, and Armstrong and Aldrin prepared for their descent to the moon’s surface the next day.
The lunar module’s 13-minute descent was beset by challenges, including a target landing site strewn with boulders, low fuel and a repeating computer program alarm code that nearly aborted the landing. After landing the LM — known as the Eagle on the Apollo 11 mission — Armstrong responded to capsule communicator (CapCom) Charles Duke with the famous phrase: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
As those words landed back on Earth, cheers broke out around NASA and among hundreds of millions of people around the world watching on TV. Amid the applause, Duke told Armstrong: “Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot. … Be advised there’s lots of smiling faces in this room, and all over the world.”
“There are two of them up here,” Armstrong responded. Not to be forgotten, high above them in his lunar orbit, Collins chimed in with, “And don’t forget one in the command module.”
Three and a half hours later, the Eagle was depressurized in preparation for Armstrong and Aldrin to begin their two-and-a-half-hour EVA (extravehicular activity), during which Armstrong uttered his famous line: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The crew would return to Earth on July 24, and ever since then, we’ve been benefiting from the technologies created and modernized to help them, including global communications, weather forecasting, transportation and, yes, computers.
For more fun and information, check out early storyboard sketches by artist Pedro Vergani and a behind-the-scenes video of the Doodle.
So strap in and enjoy the trip.
Apollo 11 moon landing: Neil Armstrong’s defining moment
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